It was Death all right. I’d know that guy anywhere. I’d seen him around here so many times, I’d lost track.

He thought I couldn’t see him, of course. Pretty much everyone else can’t see him. But I don’t know whether it’s just a stubborn streak in me or if it’s hereditary (Ma used to say she could see him, but we laughed at that), but I can see him. Plain as day. Well, sometimes he’s a little hazy around the edges, but then, who isn’t?

The way the legend goes, he rides a big pale horse. I’ve never seen that. Every time I see him, he’s on a motorcycle. I don’t know how he keeps it so quiet, but he keeps it down to a purr. It’s almost soothing, if you’re not thinking about where it’s coming from, who’s riding that hog.

I remember one time I saw him, I was at the Food Mart. I guess that place used to be state of the art, but it’s gone downhill a lot. If it weren’t the only place to shop, I wouldn’t set foot in there, but it’s all we’ve got, so we live with it.

He was in there. He was doing some comparison shopping on a couple of cans of creamed corn. I saw him tuck one of them into his backpack (black, of course), and leave a dollar bill, a nickel, and four pennies at the checkout counter before leaving. I sort of wonder where he gets that money from, but I don’t really want to know.

It was a while before I saw him again. Maybe six or seven years. I was in high school by then. I saw him sitting on a bench in Bailey Park. It was just starting to get dark. I sat down next to him, tapped out a Marlboro, and offered it to him. He took it, struck a kitchen match on the pavement, and inhaled, then lit mine. His voice in my head said, “That’s not what’s going to kill you,” and i nodded. We sat there and smoked for a while, quietly, just him and me. He finished his cigarette, ground out the butt in the grass, and headed off to his motorcycle.